Boy In Between
by Jeiq
Summary: As Lin grows up, he watches the friendship of big brother Spike and honoured master Vicious sour and fade over one pretty lady. KAU DIM, done, finito, completed. Thanks for the support, reviews and intelligent discussion. :)
1. Honoured Master's Pretty Lady

_ A story, then, for Lin, as he grows and watches his big brother Spike and honoured master Vicious fall apart over the love of a woman. _

  
** Boy In Between :: 1 Honoured Master's Pretty Lady **

  
Lin is twelve. He cannot remember his parents. He has a big brother who is not really his brother, but who smiles at him and ruffles his short black hair and picks him up by the collar away and out of danger. Big brother Spike. Big brother Spike has poofy green hair and smells of menthol cigarettes, gunpowder, the wood-and-sweat of the training gym, cologne, whisky and Long Island Teas. Big brother Spike is not always there. 

Lin knows the towers and offices of Red Dragon very well. He wanders a lot within the walls. Shin, his twin brother, is always running off into the city with the children of the other people, leaving him alone. Lin sometimes picks up a computer console, runs his fingers over the keyboard, puts the goggles on. He plays a few games and then he drops what he is doing, runs to the big window where you can see the helicopters landing or the cars pulling up at the lobby. 

Sometimes, big brother Spike appears when you least expect him. 

Sometimes a lady comes into the building, a special lady who always sees only honoured master Vicious and no one else. Lin recognises the atmosphere that builds up when she enters the building. Her hair is long and yellow and curls very slightly; she wears a long coat and he can never see her face very well. The children are kept out of her way while she is here; everyone is. Honoured master Vicious must be alone with his pretty lady. Once, Lin was in honoured master Vicious's office when she came; he remembers how she looked at him, in the few seconds it took for him to run out on sir Vicious's command. Her eyes sad, half her face hidden by the fall of lovely yellow hair. 

Lin is called to the office sometimes because his writing is perfectly normal. In his child's handwriting, neat and over-tidy, he takes down funny messages from honoured master Vicious who sits in the wide office with the fish in the huge tank, and after he is finished writing the messages, he is allowed to sit on the desk and watch the fish. The messages are rather silly, Lin thinks, but honoured master Vicious says that the same words can have a different meaning if you read them with a different eye. Honoured master Vicious promises to teach him how to read the messages. When he is older. Lin has a good sharp brain, Vicious says. Vicious smiles. The long eyes and the thin lips look cruel, but he lets Lin stay and watch his fish. Colourful fish in a blue tank. Outside the sky is covered with clouds. 

"You are quite fond of the boy," big brother Spike says one day from the doorway of the office, when Lin has fallen deep into reverie and honoured master Vicious is putting the freshly-written messages into little capsules for his men to pass to one another. Big brother Spike wears a wide smile. Lin jumps off the table and runs to him and big brother Spike tries to toss him into the air, but Lin has been too big to be tossed for a long time. 

Honoured master Vicious tosses one of the capsules across the room, and Lin catches it before Spike does. Holds it out to Spike. Who smiles and makes a mess of Lin's hair. 

"Why are we communicating with schoolboy tricks?" 

"Would anyone be interesting in schoolboy messages?" 

"Ah." 

"What are you here for, now?" 

"Just to see you," Spike says. He lights himself a cigarette, the cloud of smoke and ash forming a haze around him. Is he even real, Lin wonders? Vicious shakes his head. 

"Why, suddenly you don't like the smell of smoke?" 

Vicious looks at Lin. Spike looks at Lin. Lin feels small under their eyes; he is small, he feels, compared to them, their power and their awesome superiority. Brother and master. Spike stubs the cigarette out into an ashtray and gives himself two mock-slaps. "Bad, bad!" he says. "Children should not smoke along with adults. I am most sorry, Lin." 

Lin cannot accept the fact that big brother Spike is apologizing to him. He feels horrified, guilty somehow. Vicious is watching both of them, his mood edgy. Lin feels that he wishes to be alone, and that Lin, that even Spike, should go now. But Spike has planted his long and lazy body in the couch, and drapes across it like a rug; Spike does not plan to go. Lin feels caught in the silent and terrible crossfire of two strong minds. He wishes to go, but also to stay. 

"You have to go now, Lin," honoured master Vicious says. "You can watch the fish another time. Go and play." 

Lin definitely does not want to go. He is fascinated by the huge tapestry that hangs behind the desk, the red dragon's jaws huge and rearing behind Vicious's pale head. By what it means. The messages he has been writing, the helicopters and cars taking off and landing, big brother Spike disappearing and reappearing at random, honoured master Vicious sometimes vanishing also and a terrible feeling of being left out burnt hard into Lin's young soul. He looks at the red dragon on the tapestry, at the papers and the computer on the desk. Suddenly the fish seem not so important, not important at all. But honoured master Vicious must be obeyed. He bows to both the tall men, his master and his brother, and he leaves the room. 

They speak, but he cannot hear the words through the door. He crouches for a while beside the heavy metal, listening; he thinks, this is wrong, and he goes away, feeling guilty. With nothing to do he walks to the big window, and there he sees a car has come, a black taxi from the city. Yellow hair and a sad smile, a thin hand with a handful of bills passed to the driver. Lin walks back to the office and sits outside the door. In a while the pretty lady will walk up to the office door, and it will open, and master Vicious will see her and tell big brother Spike to go somewhere else, because she is the honoured master's pretty lady and no one else can be in the same space when she is with him. 

Perhaps big brother Spike will then play with him. 

Lin is twelve. Tomorrow he will be thirteen. Big brother Spike has promised him and his twin brother Shin a most wonderful present. Lin smiles. He is going to be older, and perhaps one day he will be as big and strong and fast and clever as big brother Spike; perhaps then honoured master Vicious will give him something better to do, something more exciting, more useful. He looks at the metal door and the red dragon on it. Feels his heart beating proud and strong inside his thin body. 


	2. A Good Little Brother

_ Thanks to you, kind reader and reviewer. Valentine's Day coming up; time for a seasonal chapter then. _

  
** Boy In Between :: 2 A Good Little Brother **

  
Lin is sixteen. Good with a gun, good with a sword. Kendo training sessions in the long shuttered dojo in the valleys with green fields. The countryside flashing by beautiful and strange from the windows of the car where he rides. 

Sir Vicious sends him to an expensive luxury store with a credit card and a list. Look for pretty things, he says. Lin is confused. He stares at the glass windows, he does not truly know how one thing can be prettier than another, so pretty that you will not regret buying it above the others. A box of chocolates, a silk scarf, sunglasses, an antique straw umbrella with delicate, ancient kanji script expressing undying love, lettered around its edges. Pretty girls walk around the store, and Lin sees the men who follow them, burdened with pretty things, like him, except that he has no pretty girl to walk behind. The things he carries are for someone else's love. Lin watches the movements of the other people, walks out of the store, into the car. Shin grins at him in the rear-view mirror. 

In the evening, Spike hands Lin a credit card, too. They are stepping out for a night of fun, the shopping malls closed, the bars and pubs and clubs wide open, roaring with light and music. Lin's head hurts, his ears and bones pound with the bass beats. Black speakers six feet hight set into the wall of the disco. Spike speaks, but he cannot be heard. Lin shakes his head and they walk to the bathroom. In one of the cubicles a man is throwing up. They wait for him to stagger out. 

"What did Vicious send you to buy?" Spike asks. 

Lin tells him. Sweets, scarves, pretty things for a pretty lady... He feels the card hard and thin in his hand, Spike pressing it into his palm, Spike's smile lopsided and a little sad. 

"Do me a favour, will you?" 

Lin pushes the card deep into his pocket. He wants to get out of here. He thinks about the cool air of the countryside, the peace of the skyline out of Red Dragon's glass windows. The girls in the disco frighten him, their lips and hair dyed saturated candy-colours, cheekbones and eyes and curves so perfect you can trace with your eyes where the surgeon's knife must have cut. Perhaps it is girls, he thinks. But he does not find the boys any more appealing, either. He cannot think of anyone he will feel for so strongly, the way Spike feels for his pretty lady. Lin fingers the card. Whose pretty lady is she? Can she belong to both big brother Spike and honoured master Vicious? 

"Sir Vicious will not be angry?" 

"Not if you don't tell him." 

Spike grins. Lin remembers him that way. 

"Then I will not disappoint you." 

"Thanks. You are a great little brother." 

Spike walks to the door, and before he opens it, while there is still a small kind of silence that the loud music cannot invade, he says, "Get something for your own girl if you want." 

Left to stare at the door, his ears hurting, Lin feels the thin edge of the card in his pocket. When he goes out he sees the neon hearts dangling from the ceiling. Valentine's Day. Give your heart to someone. Lin feels lost, again; his heart belongs to himself, and there is no one he wants to give it to. 

When he goes back to the store the next day, he sees her there, yellow-haired and pale, the spikes of her boot-heels sharp and terrible. She knows who he is; she walks alone, and after a while she comes across to where he is standing by a coat-rack, holding a black fur coat awkwardly in his hand. 

"Miss Julia," he says. 

"Hello, Lin. What are you buying?" 

Lin shrugs ang puts the coat back on the rack. Lin has a sharp sense of smell, so perhaps he is not dreaming when he smells the cologne of big brother Spike, faded and mixed with the perfume in her hair. He looks over her shoulder, but she is truly alone. She takes his arm and they walk down the rows of coats, his limbs stiff, trying to move smoothly but failing because there is another human arm linked in his. Lin does not know why she has suddenly come up to him this way. Perhaps she is afraid someone is after her, perhaps she thinks if she walks with him, they will see him, they will be afraid. His pride, the red flame of dragon-breath, flares up, and his cheeks flush with it. Julia looks at him, smiles. Her eyes are always sad. 

"What are you thinking of?" she asks. 

"Nothing." 

"Are you shopping here?" 

"Yes." 

Julia lifts her head, looks at the perfume counters and cosmetics stations, the racks of expensive dresses, the neon hearts everywhere; Julia makes an assumption. Lin knows this. He tries to stop her from peeking into the bag he carries, but she has seen the roses inside it, crystal roses fresh forever, packed for safety inside a padded box. Now she smiles, and she is not sad; she is happy for him. He does not want to tell her that she is wrong. He has never seen her happy before. 

"For a special person, isn't it?" she asks. "What a lucky girl she is, to have a sweet boy like you. But you must be careful, Lin; you must remember that you do not own people, no matter how much you love them. If she wants to go, let her go. And if you want to go, she must let you go, too. You know what I mean, don't you? That you can find someone, and think that this is the person I will spend my life with; and then you meet someone else, and you realise you were wrong..." 

Lin is afraid that she is going to start crying here, her thin arm still wound around his; he simply shrugs, and turns his head away. 

"I have to go," he says. 

"I wish I had a little brother," Julia says; perhaps she has not heard him. "You make a good little brother, Lin." 

She kisses him on the cheek, and leaves. The coolness of her lips lingers on his face, as does the smell of perfume, the brief cigarette-smoke and cologne-drift that forever lingers around Spike. 

Lin remembers this, when he stands at the door of Julia's house with his gun cold under his coat, his fingers on the handle, Shin on the other side of the door and their eyes sharp in the darkness; when he hears the voices of Sir Vicious and Julia through the door, he also hears her sadness, feels the kiss like a single tear on his cheek. He wipes the side of his face with the back of his hand. Shin is bored; yawns, still alert, but bored. 

"Valentine's Day," he says, mocking. Shin had a girlfriend for a month. She liked having a boyfriend from a clan, a gangster-boy to drive the rest of the school into a jealous, envious fury when he leaned against the wire fence of the school field and kissed her through it, handsome in his long dark coat and shades. When she realised that he actually did kill people for a living she became frightened and stopped sneaking out to date him; he, in turn, stopped going to see her. Let her go. Lin thinks about what Julia said, about letting go. He does not think Sir Vicious would be like Shin. Sir Vicious would never let go. What about Spike? Would Spike let go, so that there would be peace? 

Lin is sixteen. His head aches when he thinks about the workings of the world, about the pretty lady who makes two of his greatest role models act so strangely. He tries not to think too much. He cannot let Spike give the crystal roses to Julia now; she has seen them, she will think that they are from him, not from Spike, and there will be more confusion. He has plucked a hard petal off one of the roses, dropped it into the front pocket of his shirt. 


	3. Weapon / Gun

_ I am most grateful for the kind reviews and the thoughts that you the reader have shared with me regarding Lin and this story. Thank you. Lin appeared far too briefly in the series; his gun-toting child-like character is something that deserved expanding upon. _

  
**

Boy In Between :: 3 Weapon / Gun 

**

This chapter is in the form of a **manga**, available at this URL: 

**http://www.angelfire.com/ar2/thierry/03gun01.html**

I'm afraid you'll have to copy the link and paste it into your browser because FFN does not support html links. EDIT: I didn't want to include the text that I wrote to draw the manga on, because I could not include all of the ideas and feel of the text in the manga - but after reading Eri's remarks (thanks for reading, Eri ^_^) I decided I'll give you a choice - pictures or words, or both, so here it is. 

============== 

Lin is tired. Feels it in his bones. He cannot even reach up to his face. Down his cheek, blood running dry, dark and smelling of rust. In the back of the car he watches the city go by, and the city watches him, the city alone knowing where he has been. 

He will feel better once they leave this end of the city and go into the other. It is the same thing, he thinks, but it is also different. The smog and rubbish and concrete heaviness of this city-side is now associated with a sharp and bitter tang of gunsmoke, the screams of dying men, a thousand metal steps of a fire-escape down the side of a ferro-pillared warehouse, the briefcase in his hand, Spike's eyes going wide as a bullet takes off the unlit end of his cigarette. Lin has never seen Spike look so panicky before. But perhaps, Lin thinks, it is his last cigarette... 

Spike smokes it now, and the smoke spirals from the burning end as easily and lazily as the words leave his mouth. In the car, the air is still and the sunlight shines thin and piercingly bright on Lin's face. 

"You can put the guns away now," Spike says. "You did pretty well out there, today. You'll make less of a mess next time." 

It is not Lin's first time. But it is the first time he has made a mess. He does not know how he should feel about it. At the very least, he thought, I have cost him an inch of his favourite cigarette, and he will not get another one until we reach home. My big brother, _ge-ge_, _tai ko_, Spike-san most respected. 

"Don't worry about it." 

Spike reaches behind him, searching for the box of tissue that sits there, patient, waiting for drinks to be spilled and noses to be blown and, in this case, a wound to be cleaned. 

"Here," he says, "better clean yourself up..." 

Spike hears a silence as still as the air. That's why I hate kids, he thought; they're either noisy-noisy-_noisy_ or hush-hush-_sssh_. So full of extremes. But then again, he thought, that is exactly why they are so different from adults, and that's why we love them... 

"Lin?" 

He cannot see Lin's face; the boy is staring out of the window. That silence, he thinks. That and the blood dark and drying on the boy's white face. He forgets, for a minute, his cigarette, and its smoke curls away, wasted on the air and thrown out into the city. 

"I can't let go." And Lin is looking down at the guns he still holds in his hand. Right hand tight around the black handle, left hand weak and the wrist wrapped in white, beneath it the flesh still stinging from the blade of a knife. They are so small, the guns, but so, Spike notices, are his hands. "If I let go... I won't be able to pick them up again." 

A finger of ash burns and hovers, on the edge of Spike's mouth. He feels his lips to be glued together. He is seven years older than this boy. He should have something to say. But he is not used to speaking to someone whose future, it feels, hinges on his words. Lin's face is a cold thing now, locked away underneath the layers of whiteness bright-burnt by the sun. Spike wishes for there to be warmth in it again. He thinks of Vicious, who grows more and more distant by the hour, as though the whiteness of hair and skin were a frost icing over his friend's heart. My fault, he thinks. But since that has happened... there remains only to make the best of what else there is. And here is a little boy who does not know if he is growing up correctly... 

He reaches out with his hand, the tissue in it. Tries to wipe the blood off Lin's face. It has dried, and some of it comes off in flakes. 

"I know," he says. "I know. Sometimes it's hard to be sure you're doing the right thing." 

Lin's left hand has relaxed; Spike wonders how badly the wound is hurting, but does not want to take the bandages off. He looks at the gun, a smooth and shiny thing, cold in the boy's hand, and says, "Guns... yes, they're bad. But in this world so full of evil--" 

He remembers his cigarette, pushes it to the corner of his mouth. Ash falling, crumbling. Warmth and sparks on the fabric of his trousers. 

"Sometimes," he says, and now he is talking to himself as well as to Lin, "a man needs a gun. And in good hands... a gun is not so bad. Understand?" 

Gel stiff in Lin's hair. Lin thinks. Lin pale-faced and the guns still in his hands. Spike watches him, and for a minute his muscles twitch as Lin's right hand moves up, swift, the gun still tight in it, hand to head, gun gleaming. But it is only laid along Lin's forehead, the metal throwing a long-nosed shadow on the boy's face, and he hears Lin speak, sees the green eyes staring at him under the furrowed brow, feels the faith in the boy's voice: 

"Then I will be _your_ gun. Because you are a good man, Spike-san." 

Smoke curls, reflected in the rear-view mirror of the car. Spike is glad it is on autopilot, that he is alone with only his reflection staring accusingly in the mirror, no one else to hear Lin's trust being laid so strong and sure in his direction. He cannot look at himself in the mirror. Cannot bear to see the boy's eyes, the gun raised so cold and close to the boy's young face. He puts out a hand, lower's Lin's arm. Lin looks as though he has woken from a dream. 

"It's been a long day," Lin hears Spike say. "Sort our your shirt and we'll get us some food, okay?" 

Lin is tired. He uses his left hand to pull his untidy collar down, flatten it to stand proper and neat around his neck, holds it where the button has been torn off at the neck. There was a gun in that hand, he remembers, but it is not there any more. He wonders what happened to it. Beside him, Spike takes a long drag on the cigarette, then puffs out a series of smoke-rings into the air, still and warm and sun-lit bright. They are passing over the end of the bridge that separates the two city-sides. I am Spike's gun, he thinks to himself, so I am not a bad thing. He still cannot smile. But it feels better, knowing this. 

_I would die for you / I would die for you   
I would sell my soul for something pure and true   
someone like you... _

  
NOTE: Nothing evil is meant by the inclusion of those three beautiful lines from Garbage's #1 Crush (although you are free to interpret it as you see fit; my interpretation is, Spike is a good person to fight and die for, if you had to). It just sounded appropriate.   
Also, if you're wondering, _ge-ge_ is Mandarin for 'big brother'; ditto _tai ko_ in Cantonese, although it can also be used to mean 'boss' when used gangsta-style. Cantonese is a delightful language. I need to learn it. Most wonderful is the phrase, "If you have enough ginger (courage), call your mother to come over here!" Heheh... 


	4. The Apologist

_ I'm working on essays, lab reports and my own online manga for a while, so there won't be a manga for this chapter until later. I must say I like the way things are going. Lin is going to go through hell by the time I'm done with him. Poor boy. Music quoted from REM's 'The Apologist'. _

  
**

Boy In Between :: 4 The Apologist 

**

Lin is asleep. Fallen heavy on a white bed, eyes shut and body half-twisted as he lies breathing steady and slow. The planes of his face stark in the dark room, yellow light from the doorway bright on cheek and chin. In the street outside the lamps are on and no one walks the concrete roadside, the hawker stalls closed for this hour of early, dark, morning. The only sound is a voice, cheerful and charming, and it says: 

"That's one..." 

In the doorway there is the shadow of a woman, relaxed and leaning against the frame. A man walks up to the door; he has, leaning on his shoulder, a boy whose hair falls in dark, long spikes over the front of his face. The boy is also asleep. Spike Siegel says: 

"And this... Two!" 

"And you, zero," Julia says, her head tilting, eyes crinkling as she shakes her head at him. "You need to take better care of them, Spike." 

"Ah, I know," Spike says. 

But he does take care of them. She looks at him, sees him loosening the buttons that pull Shin's coat tight over the boy's slim neck; sees the way he glances, quick and calculating, over at Lin. The way he breathes out, satisfied, pleased that they are all right. She tries to imagine Vicious doing this, standing there, the two boys dragging their feet and weighing him down, lugging Shin on his shoulder and carrying Lin in his arms up the stairs, and she knows that is impossible. 

"Forgot babies need so much sleep..." 

He stands at her side, now, looking at the boys as they sleep. They are twins, he thinks, both handsome young men, but only Shin is aware of this; Shin who in his sleep seems to be no older than six, sometimes. Spike grins, remembering the night when he dialled three of Shin's phones and a different girl picked it up each time. 

Shin, he thinks, is more aware, more like him. Practical. Soon Shin will start to question, to annoy, and perhaps then the Red Dragon will have to tighten its claws around him, to keep him in his place. But Spike has no worries about that; Shin, who is smart, aware, will know what to do, what to say, in order to stay alive. 

It is Lin who is as innocent as he looks, asleep there on the white bed. Spike has a terrible feeling that, beneath the stiff spikes of black hair, there lies the boy's skull, soul, spirit, eggshell-thin and, in its frailty, beautiful. He wishes that he could protect Lin forever. Keep him safe from bullets and knives and poisonous words. But he knows that although he is fond of Lin, he cannot spare Lin this effort. There is Julia. There is his own life. And so he must step away, the guilt closing in a crushing grip on his ribs. 

_I'm sorry. So sorry. So sorry. When I feel regret, I'll get down on my knees and pray. I'm sorry. So sorry. So sorry..._

"Why are they so tired?" 

"They've been watching my back for three days. Three _whole_ days." Spike feels the guilt pulling at him, stronger than ever. "I didn't know. They killed these guys who were tailing me... fell asleep telling me about it." 

"They are so sweet," Julia says. Spike feels an emotion catch itself in his throat. He puts his arm around her waist, leans his chin on top of her head. 

"Will you come with me?" he asks. It is the second time he is asking this question. The first time, he received no answer. Now -- 

"No." 

"Why not?" 

"He'll come after me." 

"Not after me?" 

"You know." 

"Yes," Spike says, "I know." 

"Do you have to go?" 

"I think so." 

"I wish you didn't." 

"Let's pretend. Let's pretend... that we're okay. I'm your husband. That's our wedding photo. And this is our home." 

"Those are our kids." 

"They _are_ kawaii," Spike says. He looks at the twins. Their breathing is steady and slow and, he swears, synchronized. "There's just one problem." 

Julia lifts her head, looks at him. 

"I _hate_ kids!" he says softly. But he wears a lopsided smile, and presses his cheek into her forehead. She knows, then, that he is pretending, for all he is worth; pretending all these things he has said, and many more that are too painful to say, since both of them know these things will never come true. It is good, though, to think and hope that they might. 

Lin is asleep. Perhaps in his dreams, he feels the pretend-love of mother and father washing over him, and since he has never known the real-love of mother and father, this feels like the real thing. He smiles in his sleep. Look, Spike. What do you think he's dreaming about? I don't know. Maybe he's in love. I hope so. I hope in the end, he's okay. I really hope so. 

_I'm sorry._


	5. Rock / Hard Place

_ I found Spike's reaction to Lin standing in the way of his gun extremely interesting - you can see his face going all twitchy - and am blaming that on this following incident, which will explain to you why this story is called Boy In Between. Thanks for reading. Crisz: whoops :) The little Mandarin I know is textbook Mandarin - I speak Hokkien (wonderful for swearing) and the Cantonese in KL is rather different from that in Hong Kong (but spoken more widely than Mandarin is in China, so yeah, cellphone is 'dai ko dai'). You know, the cities in Bebop do remind me of HK an awful lot... _

  
**

Boy In Between :: 5 Rock / Hard Place 

**

Lin is alive. He _feels_ alive; strength of lions in his blood running wild, adrenaline pumping with every racing beat of pulse that he feels in the sides of his head, in his throat, against his eyelids. He can hit something on the opposite roof of this building that he stands on, as though something magical has come over his aim, as though the Sig in his hands is a god-beast devouring the lives of men in the pull of a trigger. 

"Down, down, down!" 

Rope burns the glove on his left hand, ground pulls at him. Flying off the side of the building. He lets go when he is ten feet above the water. _Down_ was the signal. Down is where you must go, taking a lungful of breath with you -- 

"Boom!" 

Spike's face, grinning, Spike's hand grabbing hold of his collar and pulling both of them down below the surface of the water. 

-- before the explosion sweeps across the bay, fire-white and smoke-black, the warehouses burning brilliant with red and orange, and the packs of drugs inside them turning the flames into rainbow shimmers within the main fire. 

Lin holds his breath, letting it out slowly, watching the bubbles drift to the surface. It is so calm in this underwater world, Spike's hair taking on a fluffy and floaty quality, all colours changed to a muted shade, blue and green and white. He does not know when it will be safe to leave the water; for that there is Spike. There has always been Spike. Smiling still, a crooked smile under a crooked nose, giving him a thumbs-up and a wink, blowing bubbles ridiculous and happy. Lin is glad that there is Spike. And now Spike is looking up, kicking long, straw-thin legs, rising; Lin rises, too, and feels the air whip cold around his wet head as he shakes it free of sea-hold, breathing once again. 

"Ahoy!" 

Vicious and another man called Primrose sit at a tea-table in the prow of an old Chinese junk, sails the colour of ancient parchment flapping shuttered and frail in the cold wind, the smell of coffee strong in the air, a crackle of defensive shields dying away as the generator is turned off and the ship allowed to drift unprotected, now that the main danger is over. Vicious looks terribly small beside Primrose, who is English with a general air of hugeness about him. Lin has met Englishmen before, but he is both awed and slightly intimidated by Primrose, who holds tiny tea-cups and rocket launchers with equal and graceful ease in his huge hands. 

Primrose throws a line to Spike, who holds on to it, flicks the loose end at Lin. Lin goes ahead of him, climbing onto the ship. On board, his body feels heavy, and he almost regrets leaving the water behind. Primrose puts a towel around his shoulders and moves aside to haul Spike on board; Lin is left standing awkward and uncertain, feeling horribly out of place in front of Vicious, who looks like a being from a higher plane, immaculate in blue suit and with his elegant legs crossed at the knee. 

"Is that it?" Primrose asks. 

"That's it," Spike says. "I figured the less people we used, the better. And Lin's pretty good, you know..." 

"Spike always sees the best in everyone," Vicious says from the tea-table. 

Spike glances over at Vicious. Lin knows that they are thinking about the same person. He feels a sneeze coming on and lets it go, happy to create a distraction. The tension between Spike and Vicious is a terrible thing now; they used to talk to each other so rudely and crudely, and you knew that it was because they knew each other so well. Now there is only this false politeness, an absence of familiarity. Perhaps Primrose realises this; the enormous Englishman coughs into his thick palm and takes the box of tissue paper off the table, holding it out to Lin. 

"No, thank you," Lin says. He is rather afraid of touching anything that is apparently the immediate property of Vicious; it is a little too much like being a child and daring to touch the glass goblets on display in an expensive shop. 

"Oh, nonsense," Primrose says. 

"Tissue won't help," Spike says. His voice is casual, normal, the sparkle back in his grin. Lin is glad. "Wrap up well and sit out of the way of the wind. And have some tea." 

"I'll get more from downstairs," Primrose says. 

"No need." Spike reaches for the teapot, a comfortable thing, round and cosy and apparently made of china as thin as eggshell. "There's plenty in here. Vicious, you ungrateful baka, you haven't had any at all." 

"I will if you put it down," Vicious says. 

"It's gone cold," Primrose insists. 

"No, it hasn't." 

"Don't meddle with my tea-things," Primrose says. "I'll get the boy some hot chocolate from the galley. I'm sure he'd like that more." 

"Please don't go to any trouble," Lin says. 

But Spike, careless and easy as ever, lifts the teapot off the table, and as Primrose reaches for it with a frown creasing his wide and otherwise kind face, the boat rocks, Lin sneezes again, Spike turns, trips, lets go of the pot. Lin sees how Spike's head turns to shoot a look at Vicious; sees Vicious's face change, still cold, but now with a recognition in it. And Lin thinks: Spike is telling him something. It is almost like the way it was, when they were still friends and one watched the other's back. For that moment, there is no hatred, no yellow-haired woman between them, nothing but perfect understanding. 

Steel sliding against wood and the katana's blade sharp in the summer sunlight. Lin blinks, rubs his eyes, looks again. In Primrose's hands there is now a gun, and Spike, fallen to the deck, stares at the Englishman for almost a second before one hand reaches instinctively for his own pistol, somewhere inside the damp blue suit he wears. But this is Primrose's boat. Spike finds his hands pinned to the deck by the rigging that lies strewn about untidily, the soft hemp of the ropes disguising metal wires flexible and cruelly sharp-edged within them. 

"Poison is expensive, you know," Primrose says. His voice is as gentle as ever; his face, as kind. The gun he points at Vicious. He is too far away for Vicious to charge, and too close for Vicious to dodge his bullets. Vicious has seen the Englishman shoot, and decides that it is wisest to stay still. The spilt tea pools on the wooden planks of the deck, the fine teapot shattered at Primrose's curiously small feet. "Look how you've wasted it. Now I'll have to make a mess..." 

"Vicious-sama!" 

Lin feels no danger for himself, not even when he stands shivering in front of Vicious with the gun's cold barrel pointing directly between his eyes. Primrose looks at him down the pistol's barrel. 

"You are mightily _fast_," he says. 

"Lin, get out of the way!" 

Lin does not really hear Spike. He has his own gun pointing at Primrose, and he has only half a hope that it is still loaded; he lost track of how many clips he worked his way through, inside the warehouse. 

"Lin!" Spike pulls against the rigging; the wires dig into his wrists and his voice hits higher notes, grates coarser where his throat gives out. "Get out of the way!" 

But Primrose is not going to shoot. Primrose lowers his gun, looks at Lin. Behind the boy, Vicious has made no reaction. Lin stands between the Englishman and his target and keeps his gun trained on Primrose, trying to forget all the times that Primrose has made hot chocolate for him and let him steer the junk and taught him many funny Cockney phrases. Primrose sighs when, eventually, Lin also puts his gun down. 

"You must learn," Primrose says, "when it is appropriate to shoot people." 

And then he shoots Lin. 

Vicious is waiting for this; waiting for the boy's body to jerk and fall. These movements - and the accompanying hoarse scream that comes from Spike - distract Primrose for a fraction of time, long enough for Vicious to leap sideways and forwards and slice off the muzzle of Primrose's pistol. The katana cuts steel-toothed through the gun with a whine and a faint suggestion of sparks; cuts again through the thin rope-wires, freeing Spike. 

"Jump!" Vicious screams at Spike. 

Spike stamps at the rigging, crushing new ropes as they rise to grab at his ankles; he jumps on top of the table, china and silverware scattering to make an expensive and heavy confetti. Primrose reels back with a bloody nose, red spotting his suit that is starched and neat and the colour of smoke and pearl. The katana sings again, steel and hemp flying. 

"Spike!" Vicious is angry. "Jump, you fool! He controls the ship, we cannot stay here!" 

But still Vicious stays, chopping the snakes of the rigging that rise to come after Spike and himself, and now Primrose is rising from where he has fallen back on the deck, looking for his gun, still steering his ship, still commanding every bit of it after the man he is tyring to kill. Spike pulls from his pocket a handful of lighters with plastic bodies, red and neon; light shines through them, liquid sloshes within. He flicks the lighters forward, packing them tight together, so that they do not fly too far away from each other. In almost the same movement, he draws his gun and shoots. 

Primrose draws back as the lighter fluid falls, burning, sparking, a small rain of fire on his wooden deck. Vicious brings his katana in a great sweep, his anger flowing in that curve of arm-arc and sword-swing; as he turns around he sees Spike running towards him, Lin's body in his arms. Lin has felt nothing since the bullet-blast rang in his ears. Now he smells the fire and the burning and the salt of sea-air, the spice-like smell of Mars dust and the gun-cigarette-sweat of Spike, sees a blur of colour wonderful and intense and terrible moving past, the sky a super-saturated blue above. Lin wonders if he is dying, and if he is, then why is it that he feels so alive? 

"Jump, you fool!" Spike sings. But it is a mocking way that he speaks, the way you speak only to your best friend - someone whom to mock is to love. 

And Vicious jumps with him. 

***** 

Mao Yenrai strikes the Englishman Primrose from the Red Dragon's list of allies. Vicious lifts a long-stemmed wineglass to thank Spike for saving his life from the poison of Primrose's tea; Spike winks to acknowledge how well Vicious stood by him, giving him time to save Lin, but perhaps Spike's eye wanders away from his best friend for a second too long, lingering for that brief moment of time on Julia as she stands across the room from them. Julia does not see the joy on Spike's face, the fleeting discomfort in Vicious's eyes. Spike is not attending dinner tonight, so Vicious is also going to work late. But Spike plans to do something - Julia knows that Mao and Vicious do not approve of it, but they will not interfere with Spike's life - Spike is going to a church tonight. And from the way his hand tightened, fingers curling to cradle a gun's handle, the way his body tensed and his eyes hardened when he spoke of it - Julia does not think he is going there to pray. 

Julia hopes that she will see him again after this night. He is a wonderful person, she thinks. He is Vicious's good friend. Vicious would be so sad if Spike did not come back. 

_And so would I..._

Lin is alive. He was almost dead for a while, but medical science is a wonderful thing in these days. He plays chess with Shin in one of the conservatories, a garden green with rainforest plants; Chinese chess, strange and tactical, squirrels eating elephants, jumping across rivers. Tonight Spike is heading out - on personal business, he says - and he is going alone, since the doctors will not let Lin go with him. Lin raises his head as Spike says goodbye, watches the lanky man walk out of the door. Spike's silhouette, full of shadow, seems to be a terrible portent for the future, and Lin is filled with sorrow that he cannot explain. 


	6. Mistake First And Final

_ Dudes. Thanks for following the story. Really really glad some of my Bebop beliefs can actually be understood when written down :D Automated Alice found me a whole bunch of rather interesting pictures of tattoos (and one super keng chou yau yeng guy) and I got carried away. I think this is the last chapter for Boy In Between, anyway; I have an idea for a post-Titan story when Vicious returns to the Red Dragon, but it opens up far too many opportunities for gratuitious Lin-bashing, so, must revise that first. Hope you've enjoyed reading as much as I have writing. _

  
**

Boy In Between :: 6 Mistake First And Final 

**

Lin is dead. Or close to dead. It is hard to draw a line between the two. He lies on the floor of the bar. The tiles of it are cool against his forehead, blood still wet and slick on the terazzo. 

"_Kau dim_." 

No one is around to hear him. There are people in the bar, but they are dead. Lin knows this, seeing how still everything is, his own small movements sharp and clear against the absolute silence and stillness of the rest of the bar. 

"Vicious-sama." 

The transmitter in his collar must be broken. No one can hear him, then. They know where he is, but they do not know how badly he has been hurt, how terribly he has been outnumbered. What a miracle it is that he is still alive. How painful it is. 

Lin turns his head so that it lies with one cheek against the floor, and he looks at the man who has fallen headlong beside him, gun slipping from stiff fingers. There is, around the man's index finger, a thick pink ring of skin where a tattoo has been removed. Lin turns his head the other way, looks at another man who fell behind a table with his hand fallen outstretched and bullet-torn. There again, a place where a tattoo has been. 

He remembers how much his own tattoo hurt, how the plastic wrap placed over it stuck to the skin and burned when he peeled it away; he remembers the silence of Spike, the look in Spike's brown eyes when Spike saw it. He had promised himself not to tell Spike, although he had wanted Spike to see it and approve of it. Perhaps Shin knew this. Perhaps that was why Shin had done the telling for him. 

"I'll bet it hurt," Spike had said. 

"I like it," Lin had replied. 

"It's a little too big. Why didn't you try something smaller, first?" 

"I don't want anything else." 

"I guess you're not a kid any more, then," Spike had said. 

Lin wishes that Spike had said something else. He does not want to remain a child in Spike's eyes forever; he wants to step outside of Spike's protection, so that Spike will never feel concern for his safety again. Wants, in fact, to protect Spike, who is worth the lives of a million men. He has killed for Spike, before; he and Shin, they have done well, extinguishing threats to Spike's life, cutting down unworthy opponents who dared to even dream of injuring Spike. He feels, though, that if he and Shin had not taken out these men, Spike would have had little trouble getting rid of the danger himself. 

Maybe now I am truly not a kid any more, he thinks; not even in Spike's estimation. For these men were sent to deal with Spike, and I have cut them down... 

If Spike had been here, had seen the way that Lin cut like a diamond-edged knife through the men who came pouring flood-like and heavily armed through the door, perhaps Spike would have known for sure that Lin had grown up. Lin remembers how fine and full and _real_ those few moments had felt, the blood and the adrenaline honing his aim and tightening sinew and speed-jumping muscle; bitter the taste of blood in his mouth, his own, someone else's, his cheek cut on his own tooth, torso bruised from the punch of bullets into the Kevlar underneath his shirt. The heavy material itches now, hot on the sweat on his skin, and before he fell down, he managed to pull it off. He looks at it, lying just a few inches from where his hand let it fall. It is black and grey. If it had not been there, he thought, I would be a different colour now. Red and brown. Mostly red. Dying men do not usually stay long enough to watch their blood dry... 

But he _is_ red. On his back, caged in between lines of black and gold, a dragon dances along his spine, and it is the colour of the blood that comes from the corner of his mouth, stains the floor, bitterness mixed with the salt of sweat and the dryness of dust. He thinks of how great Spike is, how the Red Dragon will be in the future when Spike is older and the elders allow Spike greater control, greater power. He is glad that Spike chose to turn left at the door, instead of going through. He closes his eyes. In his memory he is saying: 

"I will go with you." 

"No." 

"Then I will wait here for you." 

"Why don't you just go back, Lin?" 

"I was told to always go with you." 

"I don't want you to be with me." 

A coldness on Lin's face, in his bones. Spike's hands deep inside blue pockets, the cigarette drooping from the corner of the man's easy-smiling mouth. But Spike is not smiling now. Spike is dressed for travelling, the overcoat's collar turned up over his chin. On the street corner, a woman is selling flowers, their colour bright against the greyness of pillars and pavements of the city. 

"I regret being a nuisance, Spike-san." 

"You're not a nuisance. Don't talk rot." 

"I will wait for you, inside?" 

"Honestly, Lin, you live your life so _strongly_..." 

But Spike pauses before he turns away, and Lin sees that his eyes are narrowed, the brows pressed together. 

"Maybe that's a good thing." 

Lin believes that Spike, too, knows how to live strongly, completely, intensely, making the most out of every second that he is alive, when in the next second he could be dead. It is just that Lin's priority is the Red Dragon, and Spike's priority is something else. Perhaps Spike is talking about those in-between moments, the times in between the running and the killing and the shooting; those moments when, while Spike lights up a cigarette and slouches in front of the television, Lin will take his boken to practice (but more to play) in the park, in the gardens, on the balcony with the city vibrant and pungent and solid around him. He wishes for the feel of his boken now, the grip-bound hilt of the wooden sword better to the touch than the cold handle of a pistol. Wishes for Shin, who would parry and spar with him, fight with a broomstick, a mop handle, spatula and spoon, laughing and joking and jeering. 

He wishes especially for Spike, whom he knows is not coming back. He knew this when he started waiting, and he knew that he could have told this to the men when they came crashing through the door. But it would take some time to get away, even for Spike, and so Lin chose instead to protect Spike, give him the time that he needs. It is, after all, what the Red Dragon would want. 

They find him, half an hour later, and the light that falls through the open door lights up the dragon on his back. He cannot even lift his head, but Vicious hears him whisper, bends down to listen. 

"Where is Spike?" 

"He turned left. He was not here." 

Vicious rises, turns, leaves. Someone comes over to Lin, lifts him, gentle. Lin does not know this man, except as one of Vicious's Dragons, Vicious's man, as he is Spike's man. They have a stretcher to put him on, and Lin, turning his head to see what is going on, sees the man's hand holding the stretcher's handles. Around the man's index finger there is a tattoo of a small red dragon, twisted into a ring, exquisite in its detail and richness. Lin tries to look at the men whom he has killed, their bodies twisted on the floor of the bar, but they have managed to hurt him too well; his head aches and his neck is stiff. 

They are Red Dragons, he thinks. I have killed Red Dragons. The Red Dragon is after Spike. They want to kill him. And I helped him get away. 

Lin does not know that in a few more hours, Vicious will hunt Spike down, and Spike will pull off the most fantastic death-fake that anyone has ever tried on Mars. All he has in his mind now are two thoughts, and they will beat alternately throughout his head for a long time: 

_I have failed the Red Dragon. _

I helped Spike-san get away. 

It is the first time he has failed the Red Dragon. He will not be blamed for it; very few people were told about the decision to destroy Spike Siegel. But he blames himself, for letting it happen; he also blames himself, because if he had to do it again, knowing now that Spike was wanted, he would. 

Lin is dead. The boy who waited in the bar for his mentor to return did not survive, died with his loyalty intact; killed and replaced by the young man who walks out of the hospital when his body is fully healed. This young man says nothing when he carries one of the ends of the empty casket that is used at the funeral; his face still makes Julia think of children, but now also makes her want to turn her eyes away. The child, she thinks, is dead. Lin's eyes, green and narrow, pass over her when she walks by him, and she knows that even if she ever forgets Spike, she will not forget the broken bits he has left behind. Her own heart, his best friend's bitter shell. A boy who will be forever in between the bliss of childhood and the horror of reality, a boy in between the good memories of yesterday and the emptiness of today. The boy fills himself with the syndicate, just as he filled the smooth, pale skin of his back with a red dragon. Julia feels sorry for him, feels responsible. You deserve your own life, she says to him, her mouth shaping the words, rain beating on the umbrella that he holds over her. Dirt in the grass that they step on, water trickling down the gravestones. Everyone deserves their own life, everyone deserves to choose a place where they want to be... She looks up at Lin, knows that he is still in between, in transit. Well, she thinks, so am I. And it is, in a sad and terrible way, good to know that you are not alone. 


End file.
